A variety of mobile wireless electronic devices are available, including laptop personal computers, personal digital assistants and the like. In many instances, it is useful to connect these mobile devices to a host network for use of various services available on the host network. The facilitation of communication among nomadic or mobile device users is referred to as ad Hoc communications. For ad Hoc communication to occur, a network infrastructure must exist. The network infrastructure can be wireless, wired or a combination. By way of example, a mobile user that is a visitor to a building may wish to connect a personal computer to a host network in the building in order to use the available services. The use of service discovery methods is known to those of skill in the art in order to determine what services are available, or if a particular desired service is available.
Service discovery methods are processes in which a device continuously searches a network (or networks) to which the device is connected to determine what services are available. These services can include, for example, printers, facsimile machines, projectors, cameras, scanners, etc.
There are many existing service discovery protocols known to those of skill in the art, including JINI, Service Location Protocol (SLP), Bluetooth Service Discovery Protocol (SDP), Salutation and UPnP.
Generally, many services that are not useful or practical to a user at a given time are discovered when using conventional service discovery methods. These services may not be useful or can be impractical because they are physically inaccessible.
The available services that are discovered may be narrowed down to those that are relevant by filtering the results so that only a particular type of service is visible. For example, when a user chooses the File/Print option from the menu of an application, only devices for printing are displayed. Specifying particular features of the service desired can further narrow the visible discovered services. In the above example, for instance, a user may narrow the printers displayed to only those printers that are capable of printing in color.
When available services have been narrowed to those that are relevant, the user must then determine which services are physically accessible. There is no indication of the proximity of the user to the service and further, there is no association between the service name and the physical device. Returning to the example of the printers, there is no indication of the proximity of the user to the printer and there is no association between service name and the printer in order to aid in selection of an accessible or convenient printer.
The host network may be a fixed network or a wireless ad hoc network. A wireless ad hoc network refers to a network that is dynamically set up and torn down using dynamically created routing tables to accommodate the mobile devices that are connected and disconnected from the network. For wireless ad hoc networks, RF technology is generally employed because it passes through physical objects (it is not affected by physical objects) and due to its' broad beam transmission characteristics. While there are many advantages of the apparent transparency of physical objects to RF, this can be a problem for service discovery as all services within communication range are discovered. This can include inaccessible services such as devices located in other rooms, on other floors, or even in other buildings.
Accordingly, it is an object of an aspect of the present invention to provide a system and method for selecting an electronic service from a set using infrared communication.